When I was 19 0r 20, I had a shirt that stated, in big neon letters, U.S. OUT OF MY UTERUS, across a picture of the womb. I went with friends to Pro-Choice rallies that celebrated the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, granting women the right to choose – we couldn’t fathom a time when free and safe access to abortion was illegal. We never had to worry about whether we would have access to women’s reproductive care. My husband and I were able to choose when we had our children, when we could  afford to raise our amazing kids. The bumper sticker on my car for years has been “Pro-Child, Pro-Family, Pro-Choice,” and I keep extras in the glove box to give out to anyone who would like one. We had no doubt that my daughter, and my son, would grow up in a world that respected the reproductive rights and, more important, the reproductive privacy of women (Grizwold v. Connecticut).

Now here we are, in 2012. The rallies I attended have become a thing of the past as a generation of us grew up and had our own daughters and sons, all of us never having to worry about the right to choose, the right to plan our families, and living in a world where we and our daughters and sons have never had to worry about access to birth control and reproductive services. A generation has grown up with choice, health care and even, if not complete, fair access to Plan B. Then, over the last year or two, the tendrils of the Religious Right began to creep into our political landscape. Right wing religious zealots began assaults and assassinations of abortion providers. Personhood amendments started to appear. “Kill The Pill” movements sprouted up. And of course, Dr. Tiller was killed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqw-3NHGXvI

The GOP was uncharisteristically silent on this one.

And then our President passed Health Care Reform, and its benefits slowly came into play. People began to benefit from it, the whole “Obamacare” line became old as people were affected positively by the effects of the Health Care Reform Act. Most recently, provisions of the act required that insurance companies cover birth control in the same way they cover Viagra. And the GOP went ballistic. Why now?

Because the Republicans haven’t got a leg to stand on in order to win this race, especially when it comes to the economy. Stay with me here…I know it seems a bit obscure, but give me a chance here. With 23 months of growth in jobs and unemployment shrinking, the Republicans have changed gears. They started the year with the economy, with the old “Are you better off now…” line that usually works when the economy is down are no longer in play. It just doesn’t work with economic recovery happening, with GM workers receiving $7000 checks as their employers reach record profits.

And with the old standby of gay marriage, well, that’s not playing as well as it used to, either. With eight states legalizing marriage equality, several more recognizing those marriages, Prop. 8 on its way to the Supreme Court, the court of public opinion swings away from the “man and a woman” argument, well, the number of folks who get stirred up by this rhetoric is shrinking by the day.

So, what’s a Conservative to do? They begin trumping up the Culture Wars, God, guns and gays, and they just aren’t playing in Peoria like they used to…they can’t run on their old tried and true standbys. And so they resort to the biggie, the play that they know will always bring along the base, playing to religious guilt: abortion.

Suddenly, all of the tendrils of the anti-choice movement appear in the Republican playbook. The Republican frontrunners are talking about Personhood amendments, eliminating hormonal birth control, and now, eliminating all birth control,using the birth control provision in the health care law an excuse for going to extremes.

The  Republican-held House held a panel this week to discuss why the provision to provide birth control in all insurance plans is wrong. Take a look at the panel:

What’s wrong with this picture???

Bringing religious leaders in to discuss women’s access to birth control did not have to look like this. Old, predominantly white men are not the only religious leaders the House could have brought forward. The Episcopal Church ordains women as priests, and there are Jewish rabbis as well. But they may not agree with the misogyny being argued by the panel, so Rep. Darryl Issa refused to have women on the panel, thus turning the panel from a discussion to a preachfest.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I think that Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s words bear repeating here:

What I want to know is, where are the women? I look at this panel, and I don’t see one single individual representing the tens of millions of women across the country who want and need insurance coverage for basic preventive health care services, including family planning. Where are the women?

Mr. Chairman, I was deeply disturbed that you rejected our request to hear from a woman, a third year student at Georgetown law school named Sandra Fluke.

She hoped to tell this Committee about a classmate of hers, who was diagnosed with a syndrome that causes ovarian cysts. Her doctor prescribed the pill to treat this disease, but her student insurance didn’t cover it. Over several months – she paid out hundreds of dollars in out-of-pocket costs, until she could no longer afford her medication. And she eventually ended up losing her ovary.

Sandra Fluke was at the hearing, and Rep. Maloney appealed yet again for her testimony to be heard. It was denied once more by Rep. Issa.  Ranking member of the committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings, objected to Issa’s refusal to have a minority witness. stating the following:

“In my opinion, this Committee commits a massive injustice by trying to pretend that the views of millions of women across this country are meaningless, or worthless, or irrelevant to this debate.”

Issa has decided, on behalf of the Republican Party, that the views of women are meaningless, worthless, and irrelevant to the debate on whether or not they have access to birth control. What a paternalistic bastard. And all said in the same week in which Virginia has decided that if you want to have an abortion, you have to agree to an ultrasound. But not just any garden-variety ultrasound, which is invasive enough, but a transvaginal ultrasound. Yes, a transvaginal ultrasound. Anyone who has ever had one knows this is a whole different procedure – physically invasive.  Not only do you have to go through an unneeded procedure if you need to avail yourself of a still-legal medical procedure, but now, the government has the right to physically insert itself inside of your vagina as a condition of receiving that procedure. All this from Darrel Issa’s party of small, non-invasive government? To me, that sounds like legalized rape.

I have always asked myself, “Why would someone who was LGBT be a member of the GOP?” Yet there are Log Cabin Republicans who believe in the party’s fiscal policies. But with recent events, it leaves me wondering why women would be a part of a party that treats them as children, as beings who cannot manage their own reproductive care, who aren’t wise enough to know whether they need an abortion or whether they should use birth control. Why be a part of an organization that so actively show hatred toward women, a party that, given their way, men would decide when they can and cannot conceive, a party that is so punitive that they subject women to ultrasounds, invasive ones at that, when they are grappling with what is one of the most difficult decisions a woman ever has to make?

The Rethugs are so desperate to win, that they’ve pulled out the stops on the Culture War issues. It usually works. But this time, they’ve pushed things too far over the line. As Carolyn Maloney so eloquently put it, we will not stand for this. Women are more than 50% of the electorate, and more likely to vote than men. And there are plenty of Republican women out there that agree that this is an insult and an outrage. The GOP party line right now is nothing less than a misogynistic, all-out war on our daughters, our mothers, our sisters, our partners, on women-at-large, and it will be answered with an equal fight to preserve our rights as equal citizens in this nation. It is my hope that the extremist GOP views of women as less equal, less capable of decision-making, the “Father Knows Best” attitude will be met head-on by women in this nation, and with a fury the likes of which they have not seen.

Please let your feelings on this issue be known. There are so many easy and quick ways to do so. Here are a few:

• Here is the email of Rep. Issa’s office, in the 49th district of CA, and the phone numbers: 760-599-5000 Fax: 760-599-1178.
• Here is a link to locate your own member of the House. Simply put in your zip, then click on the link, and there should be a “Contact” link from there.
• And please donate to great organizations that elect more women, like Emily’s List. As long as men are the majority of our government, as long as men make the rules, these issues will keep arising.

The most important thing you can do, of course, is to get the word out to friends, family and coworkers and of course, get them all out to vote! Let’s send a message to the House and the Senate this November, to Darryl Issa and all his Republican cronies, that women’s voices are meaningful, worthy of being heard and oh-so-relevant! 

Are we stepping back into the dark ages? Should aspirin be our primary form of birth control? What’s the sentiment around your kitchen table on this issue? Let your voice be heard, my fellow Politicos, comment below here at Kitchen Table Politics.

The move is supposed to be “revenue neutral” – meaning the administration is also proposing to close assorted corporate tax loopholes to offset the lost revenues. One such loophole allows corporations to park their earnings overseas where taxes are lower.

Why isn’t the White House just proposing to close the loopholes without reducing overall corporate tax rates? That would generate more tax revenue that could be used for, say, public schools.

It’s not as if corporations are hurting. Quite the contrary. American companies are booking higher profits than ever. They’re sitting on $2 trillion of cash they don’t know what to do with.

And it’s not as if corporate taxes are high. In fact, corporate tax receipts as a share of profits is now at its lowest level in at least 40 years. According to the Congressional Budget Office, corporate federal taxes paid last year dropped to 12.1 percent of profits earned from activities within the United States. That’s a gigantic drop from the 25.6 percent, on average, that corporations paid from 1987 to 2008.

And it’s not that corporations are paying an inordinate share of federal tax revenues. Here again, the reality is just the opposite. Corporate taxes have plummeted as a share of total federal revenues. In 1953, under President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, corporate taxes accounted for 32 percent of total federal tax revenues. Now they’re only 10 percent.

But now the federal budget deficit is ballooning, and in less than a year major cuts are scheduled to slice everything from prenatal care to Medicare. So this would seem to be the ideal time to raise corporate taxes – or at the very least close corporate tax loopholes without lowering corporate rates.

The average American is not exactly enamored with American corporations. Polls show most of the public doesn’t trust them. A recent national poll by the University of Massachusetts at Lowell found 71 percent with an unfavorable impression of big business – about the same as those expressing an unfavorable view of Washington.

The administration’s initiative doesn’t even make sense as a bargaining maneuver.

Republicans will just accept the administration’s lower corporate tax rate without closing any tax loopholes. House Republicans have already made it clear that, to them, closing a tax loophole is tantamount to raising taxes. And corporate lobbyists in Washington know better than anyone how to hold tight to loopholes they’ve already got.

Big business will fight to keep their foreign tax shelters. After all, it’s almost impossible to distinguish between their foreign and domestic earnings, which is why the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business lobbies have spent the past three years trying to make it even easier for companies to defer U.S. taxes on income they supposedly earn outside the country.

Representative David Camp, a Michigan Republican who heads the House Ways and Means Committee, has already proposed a 25 percent corporate top rate and changes that would let companies avoid paying U.S. taxes on even more of the income they say they earn outside America.

Nothing is going to be enacted this year, anyway, so it would have made more sense for the Administration to support a hike in corporate taxes – and use it to highlight the difference between the President and his likely Republican challenger.

Mitt Romney wants to reduce the corporate tax rate to 25 percent before eliminating any tax loopholes. Rick Santorumwants to cut the rate to 17.5 percent and eliminate corporate taxes for manufacturers. Newt Gingrich wants to cut the rate to 12.5 percent and let companies write off all capital investments immediately.

It’s discouraging. The president gives a rousing speech, as he did on December 6 in Kansas. Then he misses an opportunity to put his campaign where his mouth is.

This post appears courtesy of Robert Reich.

Morning Message: Satan Speaks to Santorum – and Has Some Words For Sarah Palin, Too

OurFuture.org’s Richard Eskow: “You already talk about me like you know me. Have we met? You do look familiar, but I meet so many guys in your line of work – lobbying, that is. Oh, right, you’re a politician too. When it comes to politicians, let’s just say we’ve always got a quorum down here! Talk about your “smoke-filled rooms” … I especially appreciate it when folks like you and the Half-Governor talk about me, because let’s face it: We’re working the same demographic. I’m after their souls and you’re after their campaign cash, but it’s the same crowd I’ve been running with since the dawn of time…”

Right-Wing Theology

The American religious right becoming increasingly Catholic “both literally and metaphorically,” writes Howard Schweber, a constitutional law associate professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “There is nothing new about Catholic conservative intellectuals – think John Neuhaus, William F. Buckley, Jr. What is new is the prominence that these Catholic thinkers and leaders have come to have within the domains of American politics that are dominated by evangelical Protestants. Catholic intellectuals have become to the American Right what Jewish intellectuals once were to the American Left. In the academy, on the Court, Catholic intellectuals provide the theoretical discourse that shapes conservative arguments across a whole range of issues. Often these arguments have identifiable Thomistic or Jesuitical sources, but most of the time they enter the mainstream of political dialogue as simply “conservative.”"

University of Tennessee’s Jay Rubenstein on Rick Santorum’s “Augustinian theology”: ”Few modern statements sound more like Augustine than this one, taken from an editorial Santorum penned in 2007: “Our Constitution granted unprecedented liberty to the individual. But liberty without virtue devolves into license; and license, into chaos.” The diction is John Locke’s, but the spirit is pure Augustine. … What does this mean for a nation of free men and women? If citizens of such a place reject their liberty, rooted in virtue, then it is the duty of government, be it American or Roman, to force freedom upon them.”

Several religious leaders defended President Obama during a conference call Thursday [Urban Faith]. ”No one who knows the president would question his Christian faith, Florida mega-church pastor Joel Hunter said today on a press call that was designed to counter “escalating attacks on President Obama’s faith and engagement with the faith community.” “I’m very saddened by that kind of evaluation because it’s obviously coming from a political stance rather than a personal stance,” Hunter said. … Other religious and non-profit leaders on the call talked up the good works they’ve been engaged in with the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.”

Republican Plans Make The Deficit Worse

AP: Huge tax cuts in the budget plans of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum would produce the kinds of trillion-dollar-plus deficits that the GOP candidates are blaming on President Barack Obama. That’s the finding by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a Washington-based budget watchdog group. The study also says the more modest tax and spending plans of Mitt Romney wouldn’t make a dent in deficits that are on track to average $800 billion or so a year over the coming decade under current trends and policies – and could add to them considerably.

The Christian Science Monitor breaks down the details.

Republican proposals panned at New America Foundation panel. Former Congressman Vic Fazio had troubling thoughts about the responsibility of the GOP’s candidates’ proposals: “We have a historically low rate of taxation at 15% of GDP. Spending is at 23% of GDP. We have to move to close that gap. All of these proposals would widen it.” … The GOP’s Norquistism remains the greatest sticking point to garnering good scores from impartial, non-partisan arbiters like this.

Howard Gleckman at TaxVox: ”Except for [Ron] Paul, each of the candidates has the same problem. They have enthusiastically promised to cut taxes in very specific ways—sometimes by vast amounts. But when it comes to offsetting spending reductions or cuts in tax breaks, they mostly offer little more than platitudes.”

Meanwhile, a host of business tax breaks favored by both conservatives and progressives may hang in limbo until after the 2012 elections. [Bloomberg Businessweek]: “Business-backed efforts to extend dozens of expired U.S. tax breaks including those for corporate research, teachers’ out-of-pocket expenses and energy-efficient appliances probably won’t be considered until a post-election session of Congress, lawmakers and lobbyists said. Lawmakers, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, tried to include some of the breaks in pending legislation to extend an expiring payroll tax cut. That effort didn’t succeed, and the intense politics surrounding U.S. tax policy may discourage lawmakers from acting until the end of 2012.”

Gas Pains and Transportation Indigestion

USA Today: “The USA is at a critical juncture in how it pays for roads, bridges and transit. That’s because the federal tax on gasoline, the primary method since 1956, has lost one-third of its buying power since it was last raised in 1993. States add their own tax on top of that, but the federal tax accounts for about 45%-50% of capital spending for transportation. The federal gas tax — 18.4 cents a gallon for gasoline, 24.4 cents for diesel — is growing anemic because of more fuel-efficient vehicles, Americans driving fewer miles and the growth of electric and alternative-fuel vehicles. The tax rate on gasohol and most other special fuels is much less. “It no longer works as our primary source,” says Jim Burnley, a Washington, D.C., transportation attorney who was Transportation secretary for President Reagan. “We’re going to have to figure out, as a country, other mechanisms.” … Grover Norquist, a prominent tax foe and president of Americans for Tax Reform, says the federal gas tax should be reduced “to near zero” and the states should determine how to build and repair roads and bridges within their borders, even interstate highways.”

But the public is resisting raising state-level gasoline taxes, according to Stateline: Two out of three Iowans say they oppose the increases, according to The Des Moines Register. Iowa is not the only state where the public remains unconvinced of the need to hike gas taxes. Recent polls from Michigan and Maryland show similar levels of opposition, an obstacle for governors in both states.

House Republicans are reworking Speaker John Boehner’s signature energy-infrastructure package

to lower the price tag, shorten the duration and eliminate a controversial provision on transit funding, reports Politico. “The bill has drawn criticism from transit advocates as well as fiscal conservatives, who have expressed concern that the existing $260 billion, five-year version wouldn’t cut enough from current spending and would diverge from the “user-pays” model that many on the right prefer. … GOP leaders will now seek to put together a more short-lived transportation bill and leave the task of securing a longer one to the next president and the next Congress…”

The Battle Over Mortgage Relief

Bank of America, the second-largest U.S. lender by assets, will stop selling new home loans to Fannie Mae after a dispute over faulty mortgages. Bloomberg: “The bank is cutting off Fannie Mae from loans starting this month, except for modifications and some refinancings, because of the U.S.-controlled company’s stance on repurchases, Bank of America said yesterday in a filing. The firms are in talks to end the disagreement, the bank said. … In November, the lender said it refused to cooperate with what it deemed a new Fannie Mae policy that required loan repurchases if an insurer drops coverage. … Fannie Mae typically requires a borrower to buy mortgage insurance if the loan exceeds 80 percent of the home’s value. The coverage guards against losses when borrowers default and foreclosure fails to recoup costs. Mortgage guarantors, including MGIC Investment Corp., Radian Group Inc. and American International Group Inc.’s United Guaranty, have been voiding policies for errors including inflated appraisals or borrower incomes.”

Yves Smith’s take at Naked Capitalism: ”BofA is trying to blame Fannie, when in fact it appears the mortgage insurers have changed policies while nothing may have changed at Fannie. Is it just easier to blame the GSEs as one of the least loved brands in America? And the other bit that is open to question is the actions of the mortgage insurers. Even though they are not exactly an upstanding bunch, if BofA really is presenting loans to be insured with bogus appraisals, even scummy guys can be in the right now and again.”

The right-wing line that the housing crisis was caused by irresponsible homeowners living beyond their means doesn’t hold up. Kevin Drum explains: “Josh Mason and Arjun Jayadev recently decided to take the standard formula for decomposing public-sector debt changes and apply it to household debt over the past century or so. What they discovered was that although households did increase their borrowing during the housing bubble era (2000-06), that hasn’t been a general trend over the past few decades. It’s the other stuff that’s changed: “If interest rates, growth and inflation over 1981-2011 had remained at their average levels of the previous 30 years, then the exact same spending decisions by households would have resulted in a debt-to-income ratio in 2010 below that of 1980… As a practical matter, it seems clear that, just as the rise in leverage was not the result of more borrowing, any reduction in leverage will not come about through less borrowing. To substantially reduce household debt will require some combination of financial repression to hold interest rates below growth rates for an extended period, and larger-scale and more systematic debt write-downs.” ”

Bloomberg Businessweek’s “best recovery story” comes from Iceland: ”Since the end of 2008, the island’s banks have forgiven loans equivalent to 13 percent of gross domestic product, easing the debt burdens of more than a quarter of the population, according to a report published this month by the Icelandic Financial Services Association. … “You could safely say that Iceland holds the world record in household debt relief,” said Lars Christensen, chief emerging markets economist at Danske Bank A/S in Copenhagen. “Iceland followed the textbook example of what is required in a crisis. Any economist would agree with that.” … The island’s households were helped by an agreement between the government and the banks, which are still partly controlled by the state, to forgive debt exceeding 110 percent of home values. On top of that, a Supreme Court ruling in June 2010 found loans indexed to foreign currencies were illegal, meaning households no longer need to cover krona losses.”

Breakfast Sides

Ridicule helped doom extreme Virginia anti-abortion bill [AP]: ”Once the word “transvaginal” became a big joke on “Saturday Night Live” and “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” it wasn’t long before Virginia’s conservative Republicans realized they had overreached on abortion. … At issue was a bill pushed by anti-abortion lawmakers that would have required women seeking an abortion to undergo a transvaginal sonogram, in which a wand is inserted in the vagina to yield an image of the fetus.”

Marriage equality wins in Maryland, but McClatchy reporter Curtis Tate reminds that at this rate “it could be years before gay and lesbian couples can marry in all 50 states. No current court case will result in same-sex marriage nationwide, legal experts say, and the best near-term outcome for supporters will be that some states allow it, and the federal government will defer to each state on the question of who is married and who isn’t. And in the meantime, opponents of gay marriage vow to take the issue directly to voters — and the ballot box is the one place where they haven’t lost.”

Russ Feingold takes on Obama on SuperPACs even as he signs on as an Obama re-election co-chair. Amy Goodman interviews Feingold: “I asked him if he was an odd choice for the position. Feingold responded: “How about a co-chair that’s proud of him for bringing us healthcare for the first time in 70 years? How about a co-chair who thinks that he has actually done a good thing with the economy and helped with the stimulus package, and we’ve had 22 months of positive job growth? … And finally, how about a co-chair of a president who I believe will help us appoint justices who will overturn Citizens United?”"

Talking Points Memo lists “winners and losers of the payroll tax debacle” after President Obama signs the tax relief bill Thursday.

- A Nebraska Senate panel has prevented a bill that would ban municipal nondiscrimination protections from advancing, which means LGBT protections in Omaha can likely proceed.

- Grindr, the gay hook-up app, is getting political with Grindr for Equality.

- Why does Chris Matthews have a problem with what Franklin Graham says on MSNBC, but tolerates Tony Perkins‘ appearances on the network?

- Pam Spaulding explains why fighting the anti-business, anti-family, anti-LGBT amendment in North Carolina is important.

- Tampa may be the next Florida municipality to create a domestic partnership registry.

- The mayor of La Grande, Oregon has apologized for homophobic comments he made on his Facebook page, including calling same-sex unions an “abomination.”

- Republican lawmakers in Indiana are going out of their way to ban the new license plate that benefits LGBT youth.

- Learn more about Ithaca College’s new voice modification program for transgender individuals.

- The British Education Secretary has ruled that Catholic schools can condemn homosexuality so long as the beliefs are not conveyed in ways that “harange, harass, or berate” gay and lesbian students.

- A new poll shows 73 percent of Irish citizens support marriage equality.

- Watch teenage Youtuber Mallow610 come out to his mom:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Romney’s Economic Closet (NYT)
Any politician can get caught in a lie, but Paul Krugman notes that Mitt Romney managed to get caught in a truth when he casually admitted that austerity would hurt the economy. Someone should let him know his Keynes is showing.

D’oh! Debt Hawks Fear Most GOP Tax Plans Will Increase Deficit (TPM)
Even though the deficit is the Republicans’ biggest worry aside from women’s reproductive organs, none of their presidential candidates can figure out how to do anything but make it worse. So it’s pretty much like any other policy area.

The enduring fallacy of the CEO president (Politico)
John Paul Rollert writes that while Mitt Romney has made his managerial experience the foundation of his campaign, voters tend to prefer someone with an inspiring vision over someone who will make sure they get their quarterly reports in on time.

Threats to the Current Recovery (On the Economy)
In case you were starting to feel a little too confident about the economy, Jared Bernstein has a list of risk factors from Europe to the housing market that could still send things to hell in a handbasket (if Congress will even spring for the basket).

Opening Up the Fed (NYT)
Simon Johnson notes that as the Federal Reserve’s regulatory role grows, the number of public meetings it holds has sharply decreased. But it’s more than willing to meet with the people it really answers to, like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs.

Check out “The 99 Percent Plan,” a new Roosevelt Institute/Salon essay series on the progressive vision for the economy.

Bankers escape big penalties in FDIC failed bank cases (Reuters)
The FDIC is trying to prosecute bank execs who pushed subprime loans, but it winds up settling for chump change because it would rather take what it can get than risk losing in court — a strategy that’s even less effective once you say it out loud.

Homeowners Who Negotiate Debt Relief Could Soon Face Massive Tax Bill(ProPublica)
A tax break on debt relieved when homeowners short-sell or restructure their mortgages is set to expire at the end of 2012, but it’s one of those tax cuts that the Norquist Crew doesn’t like because it’s not aimed specifically at millionaires.

Will the Roberts Court Kill Affirmative Action Once and for All? (MoJo)
Adam Serwer examines the Supreme Court’s decision to hear a case brought by a college student who believes the University of Texas discriminated against her because she’s white, which suggests they had solid academic grounds for rejection.

Birth control: The right’s still winning (Salon)
Sarah Posner argues that while the pro-choice movement has won some battles, conservatives have a long-term strategy to mold public opinion until they can get the courts to establish their right to personally inspect every uterus for signs of foul play.

Pawnshops Accepting Wine As Collateral (Reuters)
Some rich people who are (relatively) down on their luck have started pawning off their collections of fine wines and other spirits. If the term “first world problems” didn’t already exist, we would need to invent it just for these purposes.

There’s word that even Occupy Wall Street could get a super PAC. Maybe. But that barely scratches the surface. So far, the 2012 race suggests that behind every successful candidate is a well-funded super PAC. And behind every power well-funded PAC is an even more powerful backer with very deep pockets. Take a closer look, and bigger story is that 2012 election may turn out to be The Year of the Billionaire.

In 2008, candidate Obama turned down “$85 million in no-strings-attached money,” and went on to raise (and spend) $640 million from private donors. This year, President Obama is outpacing his 2008 record for raising money from small donors. In the interim, the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling opened the door to anonymous, unlimited corporate campaign contributions. Now, in a reversal of his 2008 policy, President Obama has

Sure, super PACs get money from “little guys” too — small donors who give anywhere from $5 to $100. But, almost all super PAC money comes in contributions of $100,000 or more, from about 196 individuals. As Ari Bermanpointed out, “the super PACs on both sides of the aisle are financed by the 1% of the 1.” That means billionaires, and the new rule of American politics seems to be that every candidate that’s going to have a shot at winning, or just getting his or her message out, should have one. And in 2012, most of them — even those will little change of even winning a primary race — do.

• Mitt Romney’s campaign took in nearly $7 million last month, but $5 million it came from just 25 individuals and “corporate persons” who gave between $100,000 and $500,000; like hedge fund billionaire Bruce Kovner and Texas billionaire Harold Simmons. Easy enough for a guy who’s worth $4.5 billion.
• Simmons has practically gone a right-wing spending spree. In addition giving $5 million to Karl Rove’s American Crossroads super PAC last month, Simmons has poured $7 million in to the group in the past year. According to Politico, on top of the $100,000 given to Romney’s super PAC, Simmons gave $1 million to Newt Gingrich’s super PAC, and gave another $1 million to Perry’s super PAC before the governor called it quits.
• Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson has poured $11 million in to Newt Gingrich’s super PAC. Sounds like a lot, but it’s chump change for a guy who earns $3.3 million an hour. It’s not even a full day’s work. Not even close. Now that he’scut off Newt’s allowance, Adelson may give some spare change to Mitt Romney’s super PAC.
• Mutual fund billionaire Foster Friess may be a lose cannon on the issue of contraception, but he’s given $1 million to Rick Santorum’s super PAC, andsupplied 40% of its funding as of December 31.
• PayPal founder Paul Thiel may have little faith in the political process, but he gave Ron Paul’s super PAC a $1.7 million “money bomb” in January, instead of pouring it into a scholarship encouraging students to drop-out of college.

Depending on whom you ask, President Obama’s decision to encourage donations to his own super PAC is either a sad reflection of the state of politics, or a pragmatic decision to “bring a gun to a gun fight.” (Being caught flat-footed when attacked by a Koch-funded super PAC may have been the tipping point.) The president has been accused of using Republicans’ rhetoric to justify the move. If so, there’s a bit more urgency on the president’s part. Republicans claim their use of super PACs stems from a fear of facing an incumbent Obama with a $1 billion war chest. In January, before the president’s change of heart, Obama’s super PAC raised a mere $59,000, compared to the Republican hauls listed above.

The urgency on the president’s part has its match in the irony of the GOPs position the age of super PACs. After all their breast-beating about “fiscal responsibility” and the evils of “dependency,” all the major Republican presidential campaign have become dependent upon super PACs and their billionaire backers as a result of excessive spending.

Weeks of intense campaigning in the early nominating states have left the leading Republican presidential candidates increasingly dependent on millions of dollars spent on their behalf by outside “super PACs,” reports filed with the Federal Election Commission on Monday showed.

Mitt Romney’s campaign spent close to $19 million during January, almost three times as much as the $6.5 million he raised. He ultimately won two states, New Hampshire and Florida, and ended the month with less than $8 million in cash on hand. Newt Gingrich raised nearly as much, $5.6 million, and spent close to $6 million.

Rick Santorum, who enjoyed a surge of grass-roots donations after being declared the victor in Iowa, raised $4.5 million, as did Representative Ron Paul of Texas. The amounts still leave Mr. Romney in the lead, but no longer in a class by himself.

…The spending reports revealed the breadth and power of super PACs as the campaign hits a critical and perhaps decisive period, with outside groups poised to pick up a growing share of political spending during the costly primary battle that lies ahead.

(In fact, Barack Obama’s biggest boon in 2012 may be Romney’s tendency to burn through money and donors.)

The breadth and power of the super PACs is due in large part to the power of their billionaire backers like Adelson, Friess, Kovner, Simmons, Friess, Thiel. After all, their money has given life to campaigns and candidates that might not have otherwise gotten this far — most recently, a front runner who can’t get the GOP base and an insurgent who can’t get beyond the GOP base.

What makes an otherwise utterly un-relatable candidate a front runner? What can take a candidate who lost his last election by 19% from punch line to possibility? Other people’s money. Look at the way that these guys spread their considerable wealth around — a few hundred thousand dollars here, a million there — and you could be forgiven for thinking it looks like their betting on politics the way one might bet on horse races. (Though the GOP’s billionaire backers may have been betting on a brokered convention all along.)

It wasn’t for nothing that Robert Borosage called super PACs the derivatives of politics. The way their spread their money and shift their loyalties between candidates, that makes it clear that these guys aren’t gamblers. They’re investors, which means they expect returns.

Have you heard of William Dore, Foster Friess, Sheldon Adelson, Harold Simmons, Peter Thiel, or Bruce Kovner? If not, let me introduce them to you. They’re running for the Republican nomination for president.

I know, I know. You think Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and Mitt Romney are running. They are – but only because the people listed in the first paragraph have given them huge sums of money to do so. In a sense, Santorum, Gingrich, Paul, and Romney are the fronts. Dore et al. are the real investors.

…Bottom line: Whoever emerges as the GOP standard-bearer will be deeply indebted to a handful of people, each of whom will expect a good return on their investment.

And this is just the beginning. We haven’t even come to the general election.

If current trends continue, come the general election we see a billionaire-brokered convention yield to a billionaire-run democracy.

When all is said and done, this race for the White House may cost more than two billion dollars. What’s getting trampled into dust are the voices of people who aren’t rich, not to mention what’s left of our democracy. As Democratic pollster Peter Hart told The New Yorker magazine’s Jane Mayer, “It’s become a situation where the contest is how much you can destroy the system, rather than how much you can make it work. It makes no difference if you have a ‘D’ or an ‘R’ after your name. There’s no sense that this is about democracy, and after the election you have to work together, and knit the country together.”

These gargantuan Super PAC contributions are not an end in themselves. They are the means to gain control of government – and the nation state — for a reason. The French writer and economist Frederic Bastiat said it plainly: “When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” That’s what the Super PACs are bidding on. For the rest of us, the ship may already have sailed.

Earlier this month, I wrote that Citizens United basically had the effect of uniting the 1 percent. With each FEC filing report, it becomes clear that that the 1 percent is uniting for a purpose.

If you believed everything you heard that night, you’d think that Barack Obama is a merciless child killer (“legalized infanticide,” from Newt Gingrich). Mitt Romney said president is a godless tyrant (“attacking religious tolerance”). The worst attack on religion in history, he said. Really? After all the direct attacks against Muslims and Islam that have been so blatant over the last decade?

Kinda reminds me of my days in the gay press, when the gay boys were all up in arms because the paper I worked for wouldn’t run sex ads and actually reported on the community outside the bar culture — including lesbians! “The Lesbian Home Journal,” they called us, derisively, just because we were inclusive and not exclusive.

The candidates use these talking points like they have a basis in reality. But ask them to back ‘em up — something no one ever does during these debates, which is why you so rarely see NPR anchors moderating — and they come up with nothing. That’s because they are lies.

What kind of presidential race is this? In 2008, of course, they did all these same things, but then they denied it. No, we didn’t say Obama is a traitor. No, we didn’t say he was Muslim. No, we didn’t say he was unAmerican. We can’t control what some of our supporters say.

But now they are saying it, right out loud. No denial possible, it’s all on tape. But I don’t think they want to deny it. They’re gunning for votes from the blithering idiot crowd.

More from that debate: Newt the Historian says this is the most dangerous time the world as ever seen and that Obama is the most dangerous president as regards national security we’ve ever had, with Mitt Romney chiming in that the president has done nothing (other than take out Osama bin Laden, end the Iraq war and send military help to end Gaddhafi’s reign of terror, to name a few) to make the world safer.

Obama is shrinking the military, too, these guys say. Making us less safe (be afraid, be very afraid). Yeah, that’s kinda what happens when you end two wars. Not to mention budget cuts agreed to by Republicans in Congress.

That dreaded “Obamacare” is costing jobs! And money! Well, yeah, if you’re counting insurance executives. But in the long run, the Republican plan to repeal the Affordable Healthcare Act will cost nearly twice the billions keeping it in place will save. A couple of weeks ago, I was visiting family, and my dad and my cousin’s husband started talking about Obama being the Worst President Ever. And my cousin chimed in that it was just horrendous that Obama would want “us” (we taxpayers) to pay to educate the poor so they can get better jobs, and, y’know, not need welfare. “They just don’t want to work,” she said. “Do you even know any poor people?” I asked. No answer.

Meanwhile, the husband started whining about “Obamacare” and how he resented paying for it. Really? And who do you think pays for it when people who have no insurance go to the emergency room for general health care? Again, no answer.

Rising gas prices, too, are the president’s fault. Interesting that when bad things happen under a Democratic administration, it’s the president’s fault. But when the same bad things happen under a Republican president, the president has no control over it.

There’s a number of factors pushing gas prices up, not the least of which is butane. Butane, you say? Yes, butane. It’s a common, and dirt cheap, additive used in gasoline — but only during colder winter months. Once it starts warming up, butane starts evaporating, and the oil companies replace it with other, much more expensive additives. There’s also the demand coming from India and China pushing the prices up, not to mention our own love affair with wasting gasoline known as spring and summer vacation time.

And there’s one other thing, along with the Republican plan to drill the hell out of everything that can be drilled. Even if if that were to provide enough oil to make a dent in the US dependence on countries that actually have enough oil to use, there’s this one tiny problem: American refineries are already running at capacity.

Rep. Allen West, Insane MF-Florida, is a black guy who hates the president.

Allen West angrily asks Obama in Facebook post: Why does it cost $70 to fill up my 2008 Hummer? http://t.co/6KiYQXLy

February 23, 2012 3:46 pm via Tweet ButtonReplyRetweetFavorite

@BuzzFeedAndrew

Andrew Kaczynski

I have a better question. Why are you driving a Hummer?

And let’s not even get started on this birth control thing. I said 40 years ago that if the conservatives manage to get Roe v. Wade overturned, they’d set their sites on contraception. Looks like they’ve decided not to wait.

Rick Santorum’s the queen of that deal. Plus he says Obama is running the country with a theology that is not based on the bible. First, I hope he’s not running the country based on any theology. That’s kinda unconstitutional. And if Little Ricky thinks his theology is not based on the bible, what does he think it’s based on? The Quran? Newt Gingrich is in on this too. The Obama administration thinks the president is superior to the pope. Hey, Newt, in the US government, he is!

Here’s another from Newt. He blasts Obama for apologizing to Afghanistan for the accidental burning of Qurans “on a day when an Afghan soldier murdered two American soldiers.” Apparently, we’re supposed to behave abysmally and never apologize for being ignorant assholes because that would be “surrendering.” Or taking the high road.

And it’s not just presidential candidates going all out. In Virginia, they tried to require “transvaginal” ultrasound — that’s one with penetration — before a woman could have an abortion. Now why would they want to do that? Think about it.

Virginia and other states are pushing this “personhood” thing too — that a fetus is a “person.” Yeah, and so is a corporation. Just let me know when one dies for the country. But a fetus — y’know, if birth control and sex education were a little better here (and sex education is another thing these bozos hate) then there just wouldn’t be that many abortions. And remember — making abortion illegal (or making a fetus a person) won’t stop abortions. It’ll just make ‘em more dangerous.

See, these Republican creepos are vindictive bastards. They’re gonna punish you — torture you — if you don’t fall in line and worship at their altar. Especially if you are anything but the straight white Christian guys they are. Are you listening, Mitt Romney? You too, Newt and Little Ricky. The evangelistas you’re after don’t really see you as any more Christian than they do Mitt. So it really doesn’t matter how many letters Cardinal Dolan writes urging the Catholic bishops to push for some kind of conscience act, allowing people to not do anything if it violates their Christian beliefs (somehow I’m betting that no other beliefs will count in this), you’re still gonna be a heathen.

Just like the rest of us.

I suspect they’ll keep going. They’ll keep calling us names, vile and vicious names, and tell us we do the same. Really? Show me a Democratic presidential candidate who’s said the equivalent of any of the above. Show me a Democratic state senator who’s done the equivalent of refusing to honor the Girl Scouts because he thinks they’re the operative arm of Planned Parenthood, supporting abortion and homosexuality. Show me a liberal religious sect that is in Africa persuading governments to impose the death penalty on Christians. And, oh yeah, the Obama administration demanded that Iran reverse the death penalty on that Christian pastor — not that demanding Iran do anything ever works. I suppose you think Obama should bomb them for it? Oh wait, but you’ve already said that if we keep Obama in office, we’ll be using nuclear weapons in no time. Mmm. Project much?

And to answer my own question, yeah, it indeed appears that half the country is a bunch of blithering idiots. With no shortage of monsters ready and willing to take advantage of that.

We, the People have to say, “No, you can’t do that.”

It’s Not Low Wages, It’s Low Democracy

The reason so many factories have moved to China is not just price, it is because they do things a democracy cannot allow. Steve Jobs famously said, “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” because over there they make people live in dormatories at the factory and can roust them at midnight and make them work 12-14 hour days, seven days a week, using toxic chemicals. Richard Eslow lays it out in, Hell Is Cheaper: China, Apple, And The Economics Of Horror,

Companies like Apple don’t outsource to China because the workforce is better-educated or more highly motivated. They don’t even outsource just because the labor is cheaper there. They outsource because employers who defraud their workers can make products more cheaply, and those who ignore their safety can produce them more quickly. [...] It’s possible that Steve Jobs and other outsourcing executives really think that “those jobs aren’t coming back” because they expect it will always be impossible to underbid the Chinese – because they don’t believe Chinese workers will ever be protected by law.

That’s the inexorable logic of the unrestrained and unregulated market. If things don’t change, there will be no stopping the outflow of employment from the safe and the stable to the cheated, the endangered, and the abused. Bad ethics drives out good ethics.

Jobs is saying that those jobs and companies and factories are not coming back because over there the workers can be forced to do those things, because they don’t have a say. They don’t have We, the People democracy like we do, so they can’t do anything about it. And our trade agreements allow our companies to close our factories here and force our workers to compete with that.

We can’t ever be “business-friendly” ENOUGH. We have to do something else. We have to understand that We, the People — the 99% — are in a real fight here to keep our democracy, or we will lose what is left of it.

We, the People have to say, “No, you can’t do that.” We have to say it to the companies that move jobs to China, where people have no say and are exploited. And we have to say that goods made by people with no say cannot be brought into our country without a strong tariff. We should use the funds brought in by that tariff to subsidize goods made here so they can compete in world markets. Otherwise we are making democracy into a competitive disadvantage. And if countries like China don’t like it, they can give their people a say, pay them decent wages, and protect their environment. That would be a race to the top instead of the current race to the bottom.

The Climate Change Denial Industry

Oil and coal companies are funding a “denial industry” to keep us from doing what needs to be done to rescue the planet’s climate. They make billions upon billions from pumping carbon into the air, and block efforts to cut back their polluting. Modeled after the tobacco denial industry and its “doubt is our product” strategy, they fight efforts to move us to green energy sources. They even direct their propaganda to attack electric cars and high-speed rail.

We, the People have to say, “No, you can’t do that.”

The Too-Big Banks

It’s the same story with the biggest banks. They pushed debt on us. They used their power to gut regulations and then took huge risks that crashed the economy. They demanded taxpayer money to rescue them without even cutting back the huge salaries and bonuses. And then they funded propaganda that blamed us, the poor, the government, public employees, unions — anyone but themselves. And they used their vast power and wealth to block investigations and accountability, forcing “settlements” that make their shareholders and their employees and their customers pay.

We, the People have to say, “No, you can’t do that.”

Other Examples

There are many, many other examples of wealthy, powerful interests — “the 1%” — using their wealth and power to make us do things that benefit themselves at the expense of the rest of us. And as this continues life for “the 99%” gets harder and bleaker and we fall further and further behind.

In all of these example We, the People have to say, “No, you can’t do that.”

That’s What Government Is

Government is We, the People banding together to watch out for and take care of each other. Government is We, the People saying to the wealthy and powerful, “No, you can’t do that.”

When the1%ers demand “less government” they are using their power and propaganda to force us into a position where we are less able to say to them, “No, you can’t do that.”

We, the People have to say, “No, you can’t do that.” Until we do, they will do that, and that, and that.

This post appears courtesy of Dave Johnson and the Campaign for America’s Future, where Dave is a fellow.

A crucial flood monitoring system used for 46 years on the Connecticut River in Middletown was shut down Friday because of a lack of federal funding, according to a meteorologist from the National Weather Service. [Patch.com]

Tensions with Iran are adding at least 30 cents to a gallon of gasoline in the United States, and experts say gas prices have only just begun to rise. [CNN]

BP and Anadarko Petroleum Corp are liable for civil damages under federal pollution laws over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a U.S. judge ruled, exposing them to billions of dollars in potential fines. [KGMI]

For the second time in recent months, northern Georgia has been hit with what is believed to be a tornado that struck the Kingston Highway area Wednesday night, leaving one person dead and many residents preparing to clean up. [Rome Newswire]

The family holding company that controls Danish toymaker Lego has agreed to buy 32 percent of a German offshore wind energy project from Denmark’s DONG Energy for more than $500 million, DONG said on Thursday. [Reuters]

Hurricane-force winds and blowing snow are wreaking havoc in Denver. [Associated Press]

Some birds are adjusting their migration patterns and adapting to climate change better than others, researchers found. [Bloomberg]

The UK Ministry of Defense is to de-classify submarine data to help shed light on climate change in the Arctic. [BBC]

Canadian Solar, one of the world’s largest solar companies, announced the supply of 2,800 solar modules for a rooftop system in the Danish city of Virum. [MarketWatch]

Promise Energy, an affiliate of Adam Capital – a leading clean energy finance company – has announced a major US distribution agreement with Baymak, a division of BDR Thermea – a global leader in solar heating and storage equipment. [Promise Energy]

Germany’s government will reduce solar power incentives by between 20 percent and 30 percent from March 9, rather than from April 1, which is what had been expected, a statement released by the Economy and Environment ministries said on Thursday. [Reuters]

Thousands of coastal residents, business people and property owners will be affected by a trial starting Feb. 27 in New Orleans federal court to determine who must compensate BP spill victims. [Bloomberg]

President Obama is heading to Florida on Thursday to promote an energy strategy that the administration says will reduce dependence on foreign oil in the long term, with the subtext that the federal government can do little to halt the current rise in gasoline prices. [AP]

Energy Secretary Steven Chu will appear before a U.S. Senate committee on March 13 to discuss an Obama administration-ordered analysis of his agency’s clean- energy loan program, which gave money to failed Solyndra LLC. [Bloomberg]